After Paris, We Need More Fellowship, Not More Leadership

I was waiting to be let in for our first university exam when the machine gun went off outside. My classmates and I rushed to the windows and saw the killers escaping while pedestrians hovered around the victims’ car.

When the police arrived, we were already sitting our test in silence. All I remember thinking was, I want to get out of here. Of Sicily, that is, not school. The scene was horrific, but it was not new where I grew up. When the bombs went off later that summer, the government sent down the army.

Unsafe as we always felt, however, middle-class teenagers like me never quite felt like targets. Criminals killed each other and honest businesspeople, magistrates, and police. And yet going to school, or out at night, or to the beach, felt like an act of defiance. Some of my friends back then bravely resolved to become judges. I was much less brave and kept wanting out.

I dreamed of living in a place where liberties like a football match, a concert, or a late night out didn’t involve anxiety or imply civil protest. A place like Paris.

I have been lucky to live and work and raise my children next to that gorgeous city for a decade now. We were at home, asleep, at the time of the attacks. Waking up to concerned messages from those old friends asking “Are you safe?” was shocking and somewhat surreal. Thankfully, we are. Or are we?

I wonder if my parents felt just as lost for words as I did this morning when my seven-year-old asked, “Why did they shoot people? Is there a war here, too?” I told my children what every parent does. “We are safe, don’t worry, it will be okay.” We are still very fortunate: I seldom have to say that and know that it’s a lie.

We are alive. We are defiant. But we are not safe. This time, we are targets.

As I looked at the news and scrolled through social media, I realized that the terrorists did not hit traditional symbols of French money and power. They hit the up-and-coming, diverse neighborhoods where my friends and colleagues live, the clubs and restaurants where young people mix and hang out.

Freedom was wounded, without a doubt, but these were attacks on tolerance. On the French ideal that liberté and égalité are not enough. We need fraternité too, lest a diverse society fragment and crumble.

I thought of my MBA students, out on a Friday night, likely in Paris. I have been wondering what I will tell them after our minute of silence in class next week. Only one thing comes to mind.

I don’t quietly want out this time. We need to talk. And we had better not lie.

I wish I would not have to call them brave for choosing to go to school with people whose origins and values are so different from their own. Given how embattled that kind of commitment now seems, however, I must. Curiosity is what every fundamentalism despises.

I also wish we were better at cultivating that curiosity. Far too often we praise it but do not honor it enough. We often say that the purpose of education is to prepare the leaders of tomorrow. The question is how we prepare them, and for what.

Today it is obvious once more that making leaders effective is hardly enough. Giving them the confidence and tools to claim the values and pursue the goals of those like them will only make things worse. We need more space to question our own values and goals, and to learn about others’ — whether we are leaders or not.

The purpose of education, ultimately, is to look after civilization. That does not mean helping defend and propagate one group’s culture, be it fiercely local or globally dispersed. Doing so cultivates tribalism, if only in disguise.

Fostering civilization means cultivating our curiosity to recognize substantive differences, and our commitment to respect them — within and among groups. For that, we need not more effective but more humane leaders. More conflicted, less conflicting ones. Leaders who can hold on to their voice and help others find theirs, even when it feels risky to do so.

There are plenty of good tribal leaders already. We need more civilized leaders instead.

And come to think of it, what we really need is not more leadership as much as more fellowship. The sentiment, that is, of sharing a common predicament even if we don’t share the same history, experience, or fate. A sentiment most necessary precisely when fragmentation and fundamentalism are far more common. Fellowship is an antidote to both, an alternative to otherness that does not imply sameness.

It is easy to remain speechless, to scream, to strike when words do not suffice. But talking is what we need now, especially about what might be hard to hear.

We cannot win a war on intolerance. We can only respect each other out of it.